


the morning after the night before

by RowboatCop



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, First Time, Kissing, daisy angsting but really its fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-15
Updated: 2018-03-15
Packaged: 2019-03-31 20:33:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13982832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RowboatCop/pseuds/RowboatCop
Summary: For a moment, she wishes it hadn’t happened — not because she hadn't wanted it (she had; she does), but because now she’ll have to deal with the consequences. It was so unspeakably stupid to act on these feelings she’s been developing, so stupid to risk their relationship just because she couldn’t stop herself from touching him.Or, Daisy's angsting over what happened last night, but do you really think Phil would disappoint??





	the morning after the night before

Daisy doesn’t startle awake, exactly, just one minute she’s asleep and the next she’s awake — really awake, nothing sleepy or slow, just wide-eyed crystal clarity in the dark bedroom. For a minute, she thinks she might be in a dream, pinches her arm without knowing what that would really tell her.

She doesn’t wake up, anyways.

Her stomach turns over, though, as she moves. She can feel the soreness between her legs and the warmth of a sleeping body behind her, and she turns over to see him.

It’s still dark, but there’s light streaming in through a crack in the curtains. It falls across his naked back, turning it almost ghostly white in the darkness, except for the gnarled pink of his scar.

Last night, she had kissed him there, run her lips over his scars after his reticence to remove his shirt, and he had melted onto the mattress like he’d been waiting for someone to do it. (She’s too much a realist to imagine that he’d been waiting for _her_ to do it.)

She wants to stroke her fingers across the scar now, but finds her hand has frozen from the idea of touching him, perhaps of waking him, of beginning this day after what had happened the night before.

For a moment, she wishes it hadn’t happened — not because she hadn’t wanted it (she _had_ , she  _does_ ), but because now she’ll have to deal with the consequences. It was so unspeakably stupid to act on these feelings she’s been developing, so stupid to risk their relationship just because she couldn’t stop herself from touching him.

She shouldn’t have offered to rub his sore shoulders because once her hands were on him (once he was softening under her touch, trusting her to touch him in a way no one should probably trust her), of course she wasn’t going to be able to keep herself from kissing him. Of course she wasn’t going to be able to stop herself from touching him in _other_ ways that have no business happening outside of her fantasies.

But however much she wants to, she can regret none of it. For her, it was fantasy fulfillment — actually better than some of what she’s dreamed up about him, about how he’d be with her.

Coulson, on the other hand… He hadn’t planned for it, she knows he hadn’t, knows it had never even occurred to him to think of her like _that_ before her mouth and her hands were on him. That’s what scares her — that for him, this was a shock, something unexpected, something he’ll obviously see as an aberration, a mistake to be left here, in this tiny cabin in the middle of nowhere, in the melting snow from the freak snowstorm that drove them here.

Not that he hadn’t wanted it.

He _had_. He had touched her like no one ever has before, careful in a way she doesn’t have words for — not like he was afraid he’d break her, not too gently or too softly, not like he was scared, but like it _mattered_ , like _she_ mattered. She remembers, will probably always remember, Coulson looking up at her with his tongue pressed inside her, smiling at her not with his mouth but with his eyes. (She _came_ looking at that smile in his blue eyes, and she normally can’t get there, not the first time with someone, but of course it would be different with Coulson.)

The idea that he’ll most likely call that a mistake — that look, that smile — hurts.

Her chest feels tight, like she can’t breathe, and all she can think is that she has to be outside, needs fresh air and to move her body.

She’s not leaving, of course, but maybe it’s running all the same.

Slowly, carefully so she doesn’t move the bed, she pushes herself up and pulls on the first clothes she finds — sweatpants (hers), a sweater (his), a pair of fur lined boots some past SHIELD agent with slightly bigger feet than her left behind.

Without making a noise, she slips outside onto the tiny porch and breathes, cold air stinging her lungs, but in a good way.

It’s no longer snowing, but the world is blanketed with white and it’s too cold to be out without a coat. Still, she doesn’t feel it right away — the way the thick weave of Coulson’s sweater lets in too much cold air, the way her otherwise-bare skin stings in the frost. At first, all she notices is that it’s beautiful.

It’s beautiful in an ethereal way, like something she wants to capture in a picture but she knows it could never look quite as perfect as the scene before her.

The full moon has diffused a glow across the thin cloud cover, which is reflected back by the snow — silver light trapped between the earth and sky. Around her, the snow lies thick and undisturbed on the ground, like it’s somehow illuminated from within.

And she wants to step off the porch, just to stretch her legs for a minute, just to breathe and relax and be ready to deal with whatever damage might have come from her choices last night.

But much as she wants to walk, she can’t seem to make herself move. Indecision or something more grips at her as she looks out at the flawless surface of the snow, as she imagines her boot prints marring this pristine landscape, ruining this perfect scene, maybe wrecking this whole night.

She can’t seem to take a step.

The door opens behind her while she’s petrified in her own ridiculous indecision.

“Daisy,” Coulson greets her, her name escaping his lips on a sleepy puff of white air.

He’s tugged on his own jeans and boots and put on his hand, but judging by the silver chest hair peaking out above the zipper of his coat, he’s passed on a shirt altogether. He’s sleep-tousled and scruffy and it’s embarrassing how even through her fear of what’s going to happen next, she _wants_ him again, can feel her want like a wave of heat that slides down her neck to her breasts and her belly and then twists between her legs.

With his eyes on her, she can suddenly feel the cold against her chest, the tingle of gooseflesh on her breasts, her nipples hard and scratching against the sweater.

“Here.” Coulson offers her her coat, and she slides it on gratefully, pulls up the zipper as he watches. There's something amused in his gaze, which she thinks might be because she’s wearing his sweater.

“I thought I’d just come outside for a minute,” she says, some half-explanation for everything that’s been running through her head. “I wanted to take a walk, but it’s…”

“It’s beautiful,” he says, like it’s a reply, like he understands her hesitance to step off the porch. And then he’s standing next to her, reaching down to fold her cold hand in his warmer one, and pulling her off the porch into the snow.

Their feet crunch as they walk just a little ways from the small cabin, and then they circle it, hand in hand, looking out at the night around them. Or rather, Coulson’s looking off into the night. Daisy can’t seem to stop her eyes from landing on his face, especially the scruff on his chin. She wants to touch it, to run her fingers over his cheeks and feel the scratch of the hairs on her skin.

She’s still thinking about it when they finish their circle and walk back up on the porch, and Coulson looks over at her, catches her very embarrassed gaze.

He raises his eyebrows, like he’s waiting for her to say something, and squeezes her hand softly like this is all fine — like holding hands and her wearing his sweater and what they’ve done together, like it’s all fine.

So Daisy raises her free hand up to run along his jaw and closes her eyes to appreciate the scratch of each tiny hair against her fingertips. It feels good, better than she’d imagined, the shape of him and the warmth of his skin and the ticklish sensation of each fine little hair. When her fingers drift across his mouth, he kisses them softly and then parts his lips so that her index finger can slip just past his teeth. His tongue swirls around her finger as his lips close, and it’s hot and wet and sending shivers up her arm and down her spine.

Her whole body throbs, but she stays still, eyes closed until Coulson’s mouth opens again and she slides her finger out, painting his lips with his saliva. Outside of his mouth, her wet finger is cold, and she knows his lips must be, too, which is why she leans forward to kiss him, to warm his mouth with her own.

Coulson responds eagerly, parts his lips for her and groans softly as her tongue brushes against his.

Daisy pulls back just enough to catch a breath, to open her eyes and see the way his are closed. She cups his face in both her hands, feels his scruff lightly scratching against her palms, and kisses him once more softly.

“I thought you’d think this was a mistake.” Her voice is soft, and as soon as the words are out, she regrets them because he hasn’t said he _doesn't_ think this is a mistake. She’s assuming things.

“Unexpected,” he admits, and his eyes open, but his hands make no move to pull away from where they’ve nestled up under her coat, seeking warmth and connection. “Not a mistake.”

She smiles at that, feels a weight leave her shoulders, relief that acting on her desires hasn’t cost her Coulson, that her choices are maybe just fine.

“You knew, didn’t you?” He asks the question with his head tilted to the side, looking at her like she’s somehow unexpected.

“Knew?”

“That we’re...” He clearly doesn’t know how to complete his own thought, but his hands slide a little further up into her coat, and he presses himself against her, as if _this_ is what they are.

“I knew I…” She swallows. “I knew I had feelings for you that were...more than what we’d been.” The words are true, even if they’re too careful.

“But you didn’t know that I felt the same?” He sounds so earnest about it, and he’s looking at her like he adores her, like it’s actually been really easy for him to adjust to this shift.

She works her hands up his coat, wincing a little when he sucks in a breath at her cold fingers against his bare skin. He doesn’t object, though, not even when she dips her fingers into the waistband at the back of his jeans, feels the bare skin there.

“No,” she says. “I didn’t know.”

“But now you do.” He says it like he knows she needs the reassurance, even if neither of them are quite in a place to have the words for reassurances.

“Yeah,” she says, though it gets lost in another kiss, hot and perfect even with cold noses brushing and gusts of cold air running up her jacket everytime he moves. It’s too cold to be outside, and they seem to decide it at the same time, sliding back towards the door and the warm inside of the cabin without breaking the kiss.

Outside, their footprints crystallize in the snow, two pairs of footprints side-by-side, and it’s still a perfect scene.


End file.
